8.  The Salvation Army worked officially in Russia from 1913 to 1923 when it was dissolved as an “anti-Soviet organisation”.
9.  The Salvation Army resumed its activities in Russia in 1992 when a group of Russian nationals held a meeting and adopted the articles of association of the Moscow branch of The Salvation Army.
10.  On 6 May 1992 the Justice Department of the Moscow City Council of People’s Deputies registered the applicant branch as a religious organisation with status as a legal entity.
11.  On 12 September 1997 the Moscow Justice Department registered the applicant branch’s amended articles of association.
12.  On 1 October 1997 a new Law on freedom of conscience and religious associations (“the Religions Act”) came into force. It required all religious associations which had previously been granted the status of legal entities to bring their articles of association into conformity with the Act and to re-register by 31 December 1999.
13.  On 18 February 1999 the applicant submitted to the Moscow Justice Department an application for re-registration as a local religious organisation.
14.  On 16 August 1999 the deputy head of the Moscow Justice Department notified the applicant that its request for re-registration was being denied. He advanced three grounds for this refusal. Firstly, it was claimed that, at the meeting of the Financial Council (the governing body of the applicant branch) at which amendments to the founding documents had been adopted, only five members had been in attendance, whereas the Religions Act required that a religious organisation should have at least ten founding members. Secondly, it was alleged that no visas for the applicant branch’s foreign members, or other documents establishing their lawful residence in Russian territory, had been provided. Thirdly, the deputy head referred to the fact that the applicant branch was subordinate to a centralised religious organisation in London and inferred therefrom that the applicant branch was “most probably” a representative office of a foreign religious organisation operating on behalf and by order of the latter. Accordingly, its activities were to be governed by Government Regulation no. 310 (see paragraph 46 below).
15.  On 7 September 1999 the applicant challenged the refusal before the Presnenskiy District Court of Moscow. The Moscow Justice Department submitted its written comments, in which it advanced a new ground for the refusal of registration.
“... Article 6 of the Charter[1] provides that members of the Branch shall include supporters, soldiers, local officers and officers headed by the Officer Commanding, who is appointed from London. Members of the Branch wear a uniform and perform service, which means that the Branch is a paramilitary organisation.
Pursuant to Presidential Decree no. 310 of 23 March 1995 ‘on measures to secure coordinated actions by State authorities in the fight against fascism and other forms of political extremism in the Russian Federation’, no paramilitary formations may be established in the Russian Federation.
We do not consider the use of the word ‘army’ in the name of a religious organisation to be legitimate. The Large Encyclopaedic Dictionary defines the meaning of this word as: 1. The totality of a State’s armed forces ...”
As to the remainder, the Moscow Justice Department repeated and elaborated on the grounds for refusal set out in the letter of 16 August 1999.
16.  On 5 July 2000 the Presnenskiy District Court gave judgment. It determined that the applicant branch was a representative office of the international religious organisation “The Salvation Army” and therefore was not eligible for registration as an independent religious organisation. In the court’s opinion, this fact also prevented the applicant branch from being granted re-registration. Secondly, it referred to Article 13 § 5 of the Constitution, banning the founding and functioning of public associations which advocated a violent change in the constitutional principles of the Russian Federation or destruction of its integrity, undermined the security of the State, created paramilitary formations, or caused social, racial, ethnic or religious division or conflict. The court continued as follows:
“In the course of analysis of the Charter, certain provisions stood out, on the one hand, as being imbued with barrack-room discipline, in which members of the religious organisation show unquestionable subordination to its management and, on the other hand, as relieving the management and the organisation as a whole of any responsibility for its members’ activities. Thus, according to Article 6 § 3 of the Charter, ‘the members of the Branch shall act in compliance with The Salvation Army’s Orders and Regulations and with the instructions of the Officer Commanding’, ... ‘the Branch as a whole shall not be liable for infringements of the legislation of the Russian Federation perpetrated by individual members of the Branch’. This wording of the Charter leads one to conclude that the Charter assumes that the members of the organisation will inevitably break Russian law in the process of executing The Salvation Army’s Orders and Regulations and the instructions of the Officer Commanding ... The Branch excludes its liability for illegal service activity by its members.”
Thirdly, the court pointed out that the grounds for judicial liquidation of the applicant branch, as set out in its articles of association, were inconsistent with those laid down in Russian law. Lastly, the court held that the applicant branch had not disclosed its objectives, given that the articles of association failed to describe “all the decisions, regulations and traditions of The Salvation Army”.
17.  On 28 November 2000 the Moscow City Court upheld that judgment on appeal, focusing mainly on the applicant branch’s foreign ties. It pointed out that the organisation’s executive body included five foreign nationals who had multiple-entry visas, but not residence permits, whereas section 9(1) of the Religions Act required founders to be of Russian nationality. Noting the location of The Salvation Army’s headquarters abroad and the presence of the word “branch” in its name, the City Court concluded that the Moscow Justice Department had correctly insisted on registration of the applicant branch as a representative office of a foreign religious organisation. As a subsidiary argument, the City Court endorsed the District Court’s finding that the articles of association did not indicate the precise religious affiliation of its members because it was described as “Evangelical Protestant Christian”, certain clauses of the articles of association mentioned the “faith of The Salvation Army”, and its objective was the “advancement of the Christian faith”. On the allegedly paramilitary nature of the applicant’s activities, the City Court noted:
“The argument that [the applicant] is not a paramilitary organisation does not undermine the [first-instance] court’s findings that the Branch is a representative office of a foreign religious organisation, The Salvation Army, and that the documents submitted for re-registration do not conform to the requirements of Russian law.”
18.  On 12 July 2000 the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation sent an instruction “on activities of non-traditional religious associations in the territory of the Russian Federation” to Russian regional education departments. The instruction stated, inter alia:
“... the international religious organisation The Salvation Army is expanding its activities in the central part of Russia. Its followers attempt to influence young people and the military. The Salvation Army formally represents the Evangelical Protestant branch of Christianity; in essence, however, it is a quasi-military religious organisation that has a rigid hierarchy of management. The Salvation Army is managed and funded from abroad.”
The applicant branch submitted that this extract was copied verbatim from an information sheet prepared by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation and forwarded to the Ministry of Education on 29 May 2000.
19.  On 31 December 2000 the time-limit for re-registration of religious organisations expired. Organisations that had failed to obtain re-registration were liable for dissolution through the courts.
20.  On 2 August and 10 September 2001 the Moscow City Court and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, respectively, refused the applicant branch’s request to lodge an application for supervisory review.
21.  On 29 May 2001 the Moscow Justice Department brought an action for dissolution of the applicant branch.
22.  On 12 September 2001 the Taganskiy District Court of Moscow granted the action for dissolution. The court found that the applicant branch had failed to notify the Moscow Justice Department on time about the continuation of its activities and had failed to obtain re-registration within the time-limit set by the Religions Act. The court held that the applicant branch had ceased its activities and that it was to be stripped of its status as a legal entity and struck off the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. On 6 December 2001 the Moscow City Court upheld that judgment.
23.  On 10 September 2001 the applicant brought a complaint before the Constitutional Court challenging the constitutionality of section 27(4) of the Religions Act, which provided for dissolution of religious organisations that had failed to re-register before the time-limit. The applicant argued that the contested provision imposed dissolution as a form of penalty which could be imposed on a religious organisation on purely formal grounds, in the absence of any violations or offences on the part of the organisation. It maintained that the possibility of no-fault penalty was incompatible with the rule of law and constituted an encroachment on its constitutional rights.
24.  On 7 February 2002 the Constitutional Court ruled on the complaint. It held that re-registration of a religious organisation could not be made conditional on the fulfilment of requirements that were introduced by the Religions Act and which had not legally existed when the organisation was founded. A court could only decide on the dissolution of an organisation which had failed to bring its documents into compliance with the Act if it was duly established that the organisation had ceased its activities or had engaged in unlawful activities. The court also emphasised that a judicial decision on dissolution of an organisation that had failed to obtain re-registration was to be reasoned beyond a mere reference to such formal grounds for dissolution as the failure to re-register or the failure to provide information on the continuation of its activities. Finally, the court held that the applicant’s case was to be reheard in the part affected by the Constitutional Court’s different interpretation of the Religions Act.
25.  On 1 August 2002 the Presidium of the Moscow City Court quashed the judgment of 12 September 2001 and remitted the case for a fresh examination by a differently composed bench.
26.  On 18 February 2003 the Taganskiy District Court of Moscow dismissed the action for dissolution of the applicant branch brought by the Moscow Justice Department. The court founded its decision on the Constitutional Court’s ruling.
27.  On 20 March 2003 the Moscow Justice Department lodged an appeal. It submitted, firstly, that the judicial decisions upholding its refusal of re-registration remained effective and, secondly, that the entering of information on the applicant branch in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities did not constitute re-registration for the purposes of the Religions Act.
28.  On 16 April 2003 the Moscow City Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the District Court’s judgment of 18 February 2003.
29.  The applicant submitted that the refusal to re-register it had had an adverse impact on its activities.
30.  Following the expiry of the time-limit for re-registration on 31 December 2000, the applicant branch’s assets had had to be transferred, in order to avoid seizure, to the community of The Salvation Army which had been re-registered at federal level. The transfer process had required considerable time and effort, involving: title to three properties; title to and registration of fourteen vehicles; opening of a new bank account; replacement of every employee’s contract; renegotiation of twenty-six rental contracts, etc. Each of these transfers had necessitated complex bureaucratic steps and a diversion of resources from religious activities.
31.  The refusal had also resulted in negative publicity which severely undermined the applicant branch’s efforts at charitable fund-raising and generated distrust among landlords who refused to negotiate leases with the applicant branch.
32.  In at least one neighbourhood, the applicant branch’s mission of delivering hot meals to house-bound elderly persons had had to be stopped entirely, because an official of the local administration had refused to work with the applicant branch as it had no official registration.
33.  The lack of re-registration had made it impossible for twenty-five foreign employees and seven non-Moscow Russian employees to obtain residence registration in Moscow, which was required by law for everyone who stayed in the city for more than three days.
34.  The articles of association of the applicant branch, approved on 6 May 1992 and amended on 2 September 1997, read in the relevant parts as follows:
§ 1 – General provisions
“(1)  The Religious Association called Moscow Branch of The Salvation Army, a non-commercial charitable organisation, was established by its first members ... with the aim of professing and advancing the Christian religion ...
(2)  The first members are parties who uphold the Articles of Faith of The Salvation Army as set out in Schedule I hereto ...
(3)  The Branch shall be part of The Salvation Army international religious organisation and shall be subordinate thereto.
...
(5)  The religious activities of the Branch shall be determined according to the Articles of Faith of The Salvation Army as an evangelistic Christian church.”
§ 2 – Objectives, tasks and forms of activity
“(1)  The objectives of the Branch shall be the advancement of the Christian faith, as promulgated in the religious doctrines which are professed, believed and taught by The Salvation Army, the advancement of education, the relief of poverty and other acts of charity ...”